In the past decade, non-invasive and biocompatible mesoporous silica materials as efficient drug delivery systems have attracted special attention. Great progress in structure control and functionalization (magnetism and luminescence) design has been achieved for biotechnological and biomedical applications. This review highlights the most recent research progress on silica-based controlled drug delivery systems, including: (i) pure mesoporous silica sustained-release systems, (ii) magnetism and/or luminescence functionalized mesoporous silica systems which integrate targeting and tracking abilities of drug molecules, and (iii) stimuli-responsive controlled release systems which are able to respond to environmental changes, such as pH, redox potential, temperature, photoirradiation, and biomolecules. Although encouraging and potential developments have been achieved, design and mass production of novel multifunctional carriers, some practical biological application, such as biodistribution, the acute and chronic toxicities, long-term stability, circulation properties and targeting efficacy in vivo are still challenging.

The limited stability of lead halide perovskite quantum dots impedes their broad applications and has received tremendous attention. The instability driven by structure, interface, etc. is summarized. Simultaneously, strategies such as compositional engineering and surface engineering towards enabling stable perovskite emitters are reviewed.

White light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) as new solid-state light sources have a greatly promising application in the field of lighting and display. So far much effort has been devoted to exploring novel luminescent materials for WLEDs. Currently the major challenges in WLEDs are to achieve high luminous efficacy, high chromatic stability, brilliant color-rending properties, and price competitiveness against fluorescent lamps, which rely critically on the phosphor properties. In recent years, numerous efforts have been made to develop single-phase white-light-emitting phosphors for near-ultraviolet or ultraviolet excitation to solve the above challenges with certain achievements. This review article highlights the current methods to realize the white light emission in a single-phase host, including: (1) doping a single rare earth ion (Eu³⁺, Eu²⁺ or Dy³⁺) into appropriate single-phase hosts; (2) co-doping various luminescent ions with different emissions into a single matrix simultaneously, such as Tm³⁺/Tb³⁺/Eu³⁺, Tm³⁺/Dy³⁺, Yb³⁺/Er³⁺/Tm³⁺etc.; (3) codoping different ions in one host to control emission color via energy transfer processes; and (4) controlling the concentration of the defect and reaction conditions of defect-related luminescent materials.

This review is devoted to several approaches to realize spectral tuning for improving the luminescence performance of Ce ³⁺ and Eu ²⁺ -activated pc-WLED phosphors.

This review mainly focuses on the recent advances in various chemical syntheses of Ln³⁺-based upconversion nanomaterials, with special emphasis on their application in stimuli-response controlled drug release and subsequent therapy.